South Carolina Gov. Nikki Haley fought back tears Thursday as she spoke publicly about a racially motivated mass shooting at a black church in Charleston that claimed nine lives.
“We’ve got some pain we have to go through. Parents are having to explain to their kids how they can go to church and feel safe, and that’s not something we ever thought we’d deal with,” she said, adding that South Carolinians are nevertheless a strong people. “There is a lot of prayer in this state. … [The families of the victims] need us … and the people of South Carolina need us to come together and be strong for what has happened.”
“[W]here do we go from here?” Haley asked. “We allow ourselves to grieve, we allow ourselves to pray, we allow ourselves to question why this happens and then we allow ourselves to heal.”
Dylann Storm Roof, 21, is alleged to have sat with parishioners of Charleston’s Emanuel AME Church for an hour Wednesday evening before revealing his deadly intentions to his victims. He then drew a firearm and shot nine people dead, police say, adding that his motives appeared to be rooted in a deep-seated hatred of African-Americans.
Roof was apprehended Thursday morning at a traffic checkpoint by police in North Carolina.
“We can now tell our children that that person is in custody and we can now not only lift up our law-enforcement communities … but thank them and give them the credit they deserve and the courage that they deserve,” Haley said. “But I want to remind everybody, South Carolina has stepped up in a way that continues to make me proud.”
“We’re seeing love, we’re seeing prayers, we’re seeing support and we’re seeing humility. And for that, I want to tell you I am thankful,” she said. Haley added that it is a “very, very sad day in South Carolina, but it is a day that we will get through, it is a day that we will remember and it is a day that will allow us to get stronger.”
On Wednesday, a former member of the Obama administration hinted that Haley’s support for South Carolinian’s right to display the Confederate flag may be somehow connected to Wednesday’s deadly shooting.
“In October, Gov. Nikki Haley defended flying the Confederate flag outside the South Carolina statehouse,” Brandon Friedman, the former deputy assistant secretary of public affairs at the Department of Housing and Urban Development, mentioned in a tweet.
Friedman last made headlines in 2014 when he suggested that Army Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl, who has been charged with desertion, may have abandoned his unit in Afghanistan because his platoon may have been “long on psychopaths and short on leadership.”
